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The Unseen Destruction
An unreleased short story from the book:
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality
The first crack appeared on a Tuesday. At least, that’s when they noticed it. It was barely perceptible, a slight flicker at the edge of the world, like a glitch in a video game. But when Sarah saw it, something inside her clenched. The streetlights above her seemed to hum, their light dimming and flickering, before snapping back into place as though nothing had happened.
No one else had noticed, or at least, they hadn’t said anything. The world seemed unchanged—bright and perfect, as it always had been. Yet, Sarah could feel it, a tension in the air, an unseen force making everything feel wrong. She looked around, studying the faces of the people walking past her—people she had known her whole life. And yet, there was a hollow look in their eyes. Like they weren’t truly there. Like they were just… existing.
The second crack came the next day. This time, it wasn’t a small flicker. No, this time, the ground itself trembled beneath their feet, the buildings around them swaying as though they were made of paper. Sarah grabbed a railing to steady herself, her heart pounding in her chest. The sound of the world grinding, the low, mechanical hum beneath everything, was growing louder.
“What the hell is happening?” she muttered, her voice barely rising above the growing noise. She turned to the people around her, but they had all stopped. Staring straight ahead, unmoving, as if frozen in place. She waved her hand in front of their faces, but there was no reaction.
Panic surged through her. Something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.
The next few days were a blur of chaos. The cracks in the world—those imperceptible glitches—had become more pronounced. The earth cracked open beneath their feet, dark voids yawning into nothingness, swallowing whole sections of streets, leaving them with jagged edges where once there had been familiarity. Buildings and vehicles would vanish, only to be replaced by something… wrong. Impossible shapes and structures that seemed to warp and twist in ways that defied all logic. The sky above them flickered like a broken television, flickering between hues of strange, unnatural colors that churned together like a bleeding bruise.
Still, no one seemed to talk about it. No one seemed to know what to say. They had always lived in this world, this simulation, never questioning its nature. But now, Sarah felt a rising desperation claw at her chest. How could they not see it? How could they not feel it?
She wasn’t alone in her fear, though. She had gathered a small group of people who seemed to understand. People who, like her, could sense that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“What’s happening to us?” Mark, one of her closest friends, asked, his voice trembling as he stared at the jagged remnants of a building that had once been a well-known café. “Why can’t we fix it? Why can’t we make it stop?”
Sarah didn’t know the answer. None of them did. They had tried. They had attempted to override the simulation’s commands, to force the system to reset, to restore balance. Every attempt only made things worse. A ripple effect that they could feel reverberating through the world with every choice they made. Every fix, every patch, every effort to restore order sent the world spiraling further into chaos. The cracks deepened. The fabric of the simulation tore itself apart, faster, more violently, like a wound that refused to heal.
Sarah could feel the pressure building inside her. She could feel it in her bones. Every time she tried to correct something, every time they made a move, the world responded with more destruction. The ground beneath their feet cracked, swallowing them into darkness. Buildings that had stood tall for generations crumbled into ruins, their ashes scattering into the winds. The sky, once a soft blue, was now a sickly yellow, swirling with the weight of impending doom.
One evening, as Sarah and her group gathered in the dark, empty space that had once been their town square, she could feel it—the sense of inevitability. It was like the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for the final snap. The quiet hum of the machine, the mechanical noise that had once been distant, was now a low roar, vibrating in their chests.
“We have to stop it,” Mark said, his voice barely above a whisper, his eyes wide with terror. “We have to fix it before everything’s gone.”
“We’ve tried,” Sarah responded, her voice strained. “Every time we try, it just… makes it worse. Every fix, every restart, every reset— it just accelerates the destruction.”
She paused, her heart sinking as she realized what had been true all along. “It’s too late. It’s already happening. The simulation is collapsing. And we’re trapped inside it.”
The words hit them all like a wave, drowning them in the cold certainty of their helplessness.
“Can’t we—” Emily began, her voice faltering, “Can’t we just leave? There must be a way out.”
Sarah shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears. “There is no way out, Emily. We’ve been trying to break free, but every time we think we’re close, it pulls us further in. The system… it’s pulling us apart.”
The group fell into silence. Around them, the remnants of their world continued to decay—pieces of buildings crumbled to dust, the sky flashed with bursts of light, and the earth beneath them split open like a great wound, sucking everything into its maw.
As the ground trembled beneath their feet, Sarah could feel the air around her begin to distort. Her mind swam with disjointed thoughts, fractured images of moments that never happened, faces of people who had never existed. She could hear their voices calling to her, but they were distant, fading away with every breath. The world around them was breaking, shattering into an infinite nothingness, like pieces of glass falling endlessly into an empty void.
She reached out, but there was nothing to hold on to. She felt herself being pulled down, not by the ground, but by the cold, empty void that was consuming everything. The system had collapsed, and there was no escaping the consequences. The end had come, and it was not something they could fix, not something they could change.
Their attempts to restore balance had only accelerated the destruction. The world was unraveling, piece by piece, and they were powerless to stop it.
As Sarah’s vision blurred, she realized, with a sickening finality, that they had never been able to save the world.
The simulation had always been doomed.
And now, it was all over.
Everything around them—everything they had known—was being erased. The last remnants of their reality faded, and the silence enveloped them like a tomb.
There was nothing left.
Nothing.
And in the end, there would be no one to remember them.
Only the endless void.
Only the emptiness.
And the cold, unfeeling system that had destroyed them all.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality
Simulation Nightmares: Tales from a Broken Reality takes you on an unsettling journey through the dark side of technology, where nothing is as it seems, and reality is a fragile illusion. In this collection of chilling short stories, you’ll step into the shoes of characters trapped within simulations—worlds designed to mirror our own, but twisted beyond recognition. Each tale exposes the horrifying consequences of living in a world where the rules of reality no longer apply.
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